Born in a small village of Brabant in the South of the Netherlands and a member of a noble family, Marie-Jeanne van Hövell tot Westerflier now lives and works in Amsterdam. Marie-Jeanne is a self-taught photographer, since she started to photograph in 1982. From 1995 to 2004 she took a lot of photography classes, inluding masterclasses with Martin Kers (landscapes) and Koos Breukel (portraits). There she learned what touches her deeply: simplicity, a second layer, reflectiveness and stillness. Ever since she started using an 'old fashioned' Hasselblad in 1998 she was hooked. In the meantime she developed her own style, mostly in black & white.
Her winter scenes of Amsterdam are bundled in a book, 'Amsterdamse Wintergezichten'. Her following projects are interior photographs of classic Amsterdam canal houses, of which we did a show, "Hidden Beauty", in September/October 2014, on the occasion of her new book with the same title ("Verborgen Schoonheid"). Marie-Jeanne also makes portraits. She never uses a flash light, so natural light is always very important to her. She often does her own prints on classic baryte paper and sometimes even using classic methods like albumen, gum and salt prints.
In 2016 Marie-Jeanne started experimenting with a digital back for her classic Hasselblad. And since then she added a whole new series to her work: 'Contemplation', still-lifes in color, using objects from her personal and family collection (including the painting she uses as a background).
